This press release was provided by Sandia National Labs:
In an effort to shed light on the wide spectrum of thought regarding the causes and extent of changes in Earth’s climate, Sandia National Laboratories has invited experts from a wide variety of perspectives to present their views in the Climate Change and National Security Speaker Series.
Predictions by climate models are flawed, says invited speaker at Sandia
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen, a global warming skeptic, told about 70 Sandia researchers in June that too much is being made of climate change by researchers seeking government funding. He said their data and their methods did not support their claims.
“Despite concerns over the last decades with the greenhouse process, they oversimplify the effect,” he said. “Simply cranking up CO2 [carbon dioxide] (as the culprit) is not the answer” to what causes climate change.
Lindzen, the ninth speaker in Sandia’s Climate Change and National Security Speaker Series, is Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology in MIT’s department of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences. He has published more than 200 scientific papers and is the lead author of Chapter 7 (“Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks”) of the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Third Assessment Report. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.
For 30 years, climate scientists have been “locked into a simple-minded identification of climate with greenhouse-gas level. … That climate should be the function of a single parameter (like CO2) has always seemed implausible. Yet an obsessive focus on such an obvious oversimplification has likely set back progress by decades,” Lindzen said.
For major climates of the past, other factors were more important than carbon dioxide. Orbital variations have been shown to quantitatively account for the cycles of glaciations of the past 700,000 years, he said, and the elimination of the arctic inversion, when the polar caps were ice-free, “is likely to have been more important than CO2 for the warm episode during the Eocene 50 million years ago.”
There is little evidence that changes in climate are producing extreme weather events, he said. “Even the IPCC says there is little if any evidence of this. In fact, there are important physical reasons for doubting such anticipations.”
Lindzen’s views run counter to those of almost all major professional societies. For example, the American Physical Society statement of Nov. 18, 2007, read, “The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.” But he doesn’t feel they are necessarily right. “Why did the American Physical Society take a position?” he asked his audience. “Why did they find it compelling? They never answered.”
Speaking methodically with flashes of humor — “I always feel that when the conversation turns to weather, people are bored.” — he said a basic problem with current computer climate models that show disastrous increases in temperature is that relatively small increases in atmospheric gases lead to large changes in temperatures in the models.
But, he said, “predictions based on high (climate) sensitivity ran well ahead of observations.”
Real-world observations do not support IPCC models, he said: “We’ve already seen almost the equivalent of a doubling of CO2 (in radiative forcing) and that has produced very little warming.”
He disparaged proving the worth of models by applying their criteria to the prediction of past climatic events, saying, “The models are no more valuable than answering a test when you have the questions in advance.”
Modelers, he said, merely have used aerosols as a kind of fudge factor to make their models come out right. (Aerosols are tiny particles that reflect sunlight. They are put in the air by industrial or volcanic processes and are considered a possible cause of temperature change at Earth’s surface.)
Then there is the practical question of what can be done about temperature increases even if they are occurring, he said. “China, India, Korea are not going to go along with IPCC recommendations, so … the only countries punished will be those who go along with the recommendations.”
He discounted mainstream opinion that climate change could hurt national security, saying that “historically there is little evidence of natural disasters leading to war, but economic conditions have proven much more serious. Almost all proposed mitigation policies lead to reduced energy availability and higher energy costs. All studies of human benefit and national security perspectives show that increased energy is important.”
He showed a graph that demonstrated that more energy consumption leads to higher literacy rate, lower infant mortality and a lower number of children per woman.
Given that proposed policies are unlikely to significantly influence climate and that lower energy availability could be considered a significant threat to national security, to continue with a mitigation policy that reduces available energy “would, at the least, appear to be irresponsible,” he argued.
Responding to audience questions about rising temperatures, he said a 0.8 of a degree C change in temperature in 150 years is a small change. Questioned about five-, seven-, and 17-year averages that seem to show that Earth’s surface temperature is rising, he said temperatures are always fluctuating by tenths of a degree.
As for the future, “Uncertainty plays a huge role in this issue,” Lindzen said. “It’s not that we expect disaster, it’s that the uncertainty is said to offer the possibility of disaster: implausible, but high consequence. Somewhere it has to be like the possible asteroid impact: Live with it.”
To a sympathetic questioner who said, “You are like a voice crying in the wilderness. It must be hard to get published,” Lindzen said, adding that billions of dollars go into funding climate studies. “The reward for solving problems is that your funding gets cut. It’s not a good incentive structure.”
Asked whether the prudent approach to possible climate change would be to prepare a gradated series of responses, much as insurance companies do when they insure cars or houses, Lindzen did not shift from his position that no actions are needed until more data is gathered.
When another Sandia employee pointed out the large number of models by researchers around the globe that suggest increases in world temperature, Lindzen said he doubted the models were independently derived but rather might produce common results because of their common origins.
The Climate Security lecture series is funded by Sandia’s Energy, Climate and Infrastructure Security division. Rob Leland is director of Sandia’s Climate Security Program.
Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies and economic competitiveness.
h/t to Marc Marano
KR says: “I am, incidentally, unaware of _any_ publications or research Lindzen has done regarding aerosols”
Y.‑S. Choi, R. S. Lindzen, C.‑H. Ho, and J. Kim, 2010: Space observations of cold‑cloud phase change. Proc .Nat .Acad. Sci., 107, 11211-11216.
“In particular, current climate models generally overpredict current warming, and assume that the
excessive warming is cancelled by aerosols (31). As noted by Kiehl et al. (32), the adjustments are different for each model. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Fourth Assessment (33), both the primary and secondary (via the effects of aerosols on clouds) are highly uncertain, but the IPCC expects each effect to act to cool. The present paper offers a
potentially important example of where the secondary effect is to warm, thus reducing the ability of aerosols to compensate for excessive warming in current models.”
Any?
“As to aerosol records – we do indeed have a pretty good idea of the levels, both from snowcap sampling for pre-industrial times and in addition from our records of energy usage – burning any fossil fuel puts out a certain amount of aerosols.”
No. Again, aerosols are not a well mixed gas, while the deposition in Antarctica can tell us about large volcanic eruptions, it does not tell us the aerosol loading that was present in distant locations. As for records from energy use, those cannot tell us how long particulates stayed in the air, or the form they took. The level of forcing is very sensitive to the form of both.
“I will not, however, attempt to make any predictions as to the _rate_ of aerosol change – that’s dependent on political and economic decisions around the world, and I won’t claim _any_ skill in predicting either politics or economics.”
It’s not really about what you claim. It’s about what people who do attempt to predict about the rate of aerosol change claim. But I am glad to here you now don’t. If it is not possible to predict political and economic decisions that would control this “crucial” factor, how can you claim to have any idea whatsoever about future climate? What can you possibly have to be so alarmed about? Oh, you can’t make the predictions, but others can, and you find their ridiculous predictions plausible base on your cursory analysis of the situation. Well, you’ll have to forgive me because I just find these projections completely, utterly stupid.
Willis Eschenbach – Only if you (like Lindzen) ignore the aerosol evidence, and assume against all the evidence that aerosols have zero effect.
1.66 W/m^2 for CO2 alone. 1.6 W/m^2 for all forcings combined. Nowhere near 3.7 W/m^2.
Gail Combs – good point. The Republicans and Democrats don’t represent the average Joe and Jane. Follow the money.
KR says:
July 25, 2012 at 7:27 pm
To the best of my recollection, the 30 years goes back at least to the 1960s when climatology was about organizing records and determining averages. While the 11 year solar cycle was recognized, the PDO and AMO were not, so we really should be looking at 60 year periods to even out the effect of those. The most recent 3 decade period that is sometimes still used often exaggerates the effect of those cycles. Most notably, of course, is the satellite record that covers nearly the entire last warm phase of of the PDO.
If you have a reference that explains the origin of the “30 years,” I’d be happy to turn it into a post here.
timetochooseagain – Fair enough, the detailed distribution of aerosols has a significant influence on their effects. And that is incorporated into the rather large (although not encompassing “zero”) uncertainties in their forcings.
We do know how much aerosol pollution we have caused, and good estimates on the ‘hang time’ for different kinds of aerosols.
Again, though, you cannot assume that aerosol forcing is zero. And even if you did, Lindzen’s statement is nonsense, as without _any_ aerosol forcing (again, a nonsense claim) we would still be <80% of the way to a CO2 doubling. As it stands, with the best estimate for aerosols, we're at about 43%.
Uncertainties do not mean you can cherry-pick and assert an extreme value as ground truth. They mean you need to consider the range, as -0.3 W/m^2 forcing for aerosols is just as likely as -2.7 W/m^2. While -1.3 W/m^2 is the best estimate given the data we have…
Ric Werme – Why 30 years? That’s an _excellent_ question.
When looking at too short a time frame almost _any_ trend can be found by picking peaks/valleys, although they are not statistically significant (http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=47). It’s vital to have enough data that trends, up, down, or none, can be identified with some confidence against the noise and variation of the signal – that an apparent trend isn’t just chance.
Santer et al 2011 (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011JD016263.shtml) found 17 years an absolute minimum for identifying a trend (of the currently observed level) with the noise level of the RSS satellite data. The World Meteorological Organization chose 30 years (http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/wcp/ccl/faqs.html), as 2/3 of one basic measure, the length of time for the standard deviation to stabilize (45 years, http://bartonpaullevenson.com/30Years.html). It’s not unreasonable, as 30 years is usually sufficient to determine trends with 2-sigma confidence against the null hypothesis of no trend whatsoever, and a more stringent 45 years (while a very solid estimate) is shorter than many economic changes that affect GHG forcings. Note that very small trends up or down would require longer periods to establish against the noise – but what we’re currently seeing (+0.16-0.17C/decade) can be easily and with statistical significance identified over 30 year periods – it’s big enough to stand out, to be much less than a 1/20 chance against noise and variation. If you account for ENSO, volcanic eruptions, and the 11 year solar cycle (Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/pdf/1748-9326_6_4_044022.pdf), you can make a statistically significant estimate from 11-12 years of data, although that is dependent on a multiple linear regression. For the purposes of establishing trends against raw data a longer period is probably a good idea.
As to 60 year cycles – I would consider those possible, but definitely not plausible – there’s no theoretic mechanism for storing/blocking energy for that period of time, and because the forcings we do know about over the last few hundred years match the pattern of climate change quite well without them. Why reject mechanisms we have evidence for, in favor of unsupported patterns without evidence?
—
30 years for identifying trends in raw data holds up. 10-15 years do not.
Lindzen gets a lot of press because he’s a sceptic.
And props to him, he’s probably one of the world’s top 100 climate scientists.
But probably not one of the top 50.
Sceptics make up about 2 or 3 % of climate scientists. Let’s not exaggerate the opinion of one in one group by not reporting on the learned opinion of 100 in the other group.
Lindzen’s correct to question hindcasting as a method of proving climate models, as it has been shown that climate models are much more accurate at reproducing global mean surface temperature than they should be given the errors in the inputs. However “The models are no more valuable than answering a test when you have the questions in advance” is not right. A climate model could quite conceivably incorrectly hindcast. That they don’t is evidence of some skill in the models.
Moreover, climate models run into the future also have good skill at reproducing global mean surface temperatures.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/290/5499/2133/F1.medium.gif
Wombat says:
July 25, 2012 at 8:58 pm
Oh piffle. Not only does that try to separated out the natural and anthropomorphic components, it only starts in 1860.
Why does it correlate so poorly with the 2485 year record and prediction at http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/china/liu-2011-predictions-web.gif
Figure 5 Prediction of temperature trends on the central-eastern Tibetan Plateau for the next 120 years. Blue line, initial series; orange line, calibration series, 464 BC – 834 AD; purple line, verification series, 835 – 1980 AD; red line, forecasting series, 1980 – 2134 AD.
Yeah, yeah, one is global, one is regional. I don’t think both will verify….
Much has appeared about Phil Jones’ quote about 15 years. There are actually two different quotes involving 15 years and which involve either Phil Jones or the Met office. The first was on February 13, 2010 where there was in fact an increase of 0.12/decade, but it was not significant at the 95% level. The second quote came at the beginning of this year where it was simply stated that there has been no warming for 15 years. Hadcrut3 has not been updated on WFT since March, but for the 15 year period from April 1997 to March 2012, the slope is actually slightly negative so there is no longer any need to invoke a significance level to the negative number.
See the graph below.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1995/to:2013/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1995/to:2010/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.25/to:2012.25/trend
The green upward slope over 15 years is what Phil Jones talked about on February 13, 2010. The blue downward slope is the situation over the most recent 15 years that Hadcrut3 is on WFT.
Wombat says:
July 25, 2012 at 8:58 pm
Lindzen gets a lot of press because he’s a sceptic.
And props to him, he’s probably one of the world’s top 100 climate scientists.
But probably not one of the top 50.
Sceptics make up about 2 or 3 % of climate scientists. Let’s not exaggerate the opinion of one in one group by not reporting on the learned opinion of 100 in the other group.
========================
Links to your sources of info please.
Werner Brozek – “…for the 15 year period from April 1997 to March 2012, the slope is actually slightly negative so there is no longer any need to invoke a significance level to the negative number.”
Um, no. A statistically insignificant period, one wherein there is a fair chance of the apparent trend being an artifact of noise, _does not prove anything_.
15 years of raw data is just not sufficient to establish a linear trend in the presence of noise and variation. See http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=47 for examples of insignificant periods.
My dear Wombat, perhaps you should realise that because CO2 enters IR self-absorption mode by ~200 ppmV, there can be no CO2-AGW. This datum comes from metallurgy and has been tested experimentally for 60 years.
The climate models have 5 mistakes in physics, two so elementary a teenager should be embarrassed, two more subtle and the fifth the totally imaginary ‘back radiation’, a big mistake by meteorologists but they’re taught it so can’t be blamed.
To even remotely imagine that hind casting such a mistake-riddled scientific discipline magically correct matters is plain stoopid. These models are worse than useless because they mislead people. The programme needs to be restarted with the mistakes corrected.
1. ‘Back radiation’ does not exist – pyrgeometers do not measure it – you need two, back to back to get the true net radiative heat transfer.
2. The IR physics is totally wrong – you can’t get direct thermalisation because ithat’s quantum excluded.
3, The Earth cannot emit IR as a black body in a vacuum.
4. At TOA, DOWN emissivity = zero..
5. Sagan’s aerosol optical physics doesn’t include a second optical process so goes completely wrong for bimodal droplet distributions in clouds. Because it’s built into satellite data processing algorithms, none of these data are safe..
K.R.Says…”30 years for identifying trends in raw data holds up. 10-15 years do not.”
=====================================================
Stop it please, you are killing me. (-; (Hint..look for the 60 year peak to peak T swings)
Iceland… http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=620040300000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
U.S. http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/
World http://www.google.com/imgres?q=sixty+year+global+temperature+charts&um=1&hl=en&qscrl=1&nord=1&rlz=1T4TSHB_en___US337&biw=1024&bih=522&tbm=isch&tbnid=JA0dGe29djSjnM:&imgrefurl=http://hot-topic.co.nz/people-talkin-open-thread-1/&docid=tBP4r33x3ybvaM&imgurl=http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/orssengo3.png&w=645&h=416&ei=–YQUJnkM8_ciQL3r4DgCQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=105&vpy=205&dur=274&hovh=180&hovw=280&tx=112&ty=120&sig=117976538410540074921&page=1&tbnh=136&tbnw=214&start=0&ndsp=9&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:75
Now genuis, match this to a PDO graph.
George E. Smith; says:
July 25, 2012 at 11:41 am
So now among the very famous and well known “climate science “experts”, which ones, actually have a PhD in “climate Science”, rather than some other non climate science discipline??
What are the best schools offering well respected PhDs in “climate science”?
If you’re a non-smoker, you’ve probably missed the “Close Cover Before Striking School of Climate Science” ads, but the back cover of my latest issue of Google-Fu Monthly has a nice full-pager: “Become a
Television Repair ProfessionalClimate Science Ph.D. at Home!Earn Big MoneyGet Government Grants While You Learn!”timetochooseagain says:
July 25, 2012 at 8:56 am
“mainstream opinion that climate change could hurt national security”
Mainstream? Among who? I hate to sound like a libertarian or liberal nutjob, but those in the Defense Department etc. pushing this nonsense, long debunked theory are simply not credible and probably advance it to enhance their funding.
more soylent green! nails that one (July 25, 2012 at 9:58 am) with “In addition to the funding aspect, the Defense Department and the military branches in this country are now very politically oriented. That is, they will do and say what they believe the politicians want. The entire government is infested with careerists, all to the detriment of the public.”
DoD’s primary concern hasn’t been defense since before the USSR imploded, it’s been about which branch can get the biggest slice of the budget. The USAF “owned” the terrestrial portion of the Arctic for half a century, and the Navy contented itself with finding polynyas for their boomers. CAGW projections of an ice-free Arctic opens a whole new area for mission-grab and the funding that goes with it.
The 30 years for climate is because the old log books were set up with ten years in a book, each page had the days of the month, for each of the ten years in a decade with a monthly summary at the end of each month with an yearly summary at the end of the year.
They ran double totals across the days to get monthly totals and averages, down the columns to get daily totals/averages. The standard library table was 3′ X 6′ and just enough room to open three books of archives, and the new entry book for the current decade. By dividing by three you get a lot of thirds which are easy to round up or down. Dividing by four leaves you with a lot of halves, just to messy.
It was not uncommon for the record takers to place bets in the side margins as to what the monthly averages would be (with initials and amount of the bets). I personally think it was the awkwardness of trying to have more than three past record books open at the same time, that set the standard for 30 years is climate.
eyesonu says:
July 25, 2012 at 9:40 pm
Wombat says:
July 25, 2012 at 8:58 pm
Lindzen gets a lot of press because he’s a sceptic.
And props to him, he’s probably one of the world’s top 100 climate scientists.
But probably not one of the top 50.
Sceptics make up about 2 or 3 % of climate scientists. Let’s not exaggerate the opinion of one in one group by not reporting on the learned opinion of 100 in the other group.
========================
Links to your sources of info please.
____
Top Climate Scientists:
Lindzen is 399th on this list of scientists ordered by number of citations to their papers that are on the subject of climate change:
http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/climate_authors_table_by_clim.html
So I might be wrong about him being in the top 100. He is in the top 100 by this list ordered by number of cites of their fourth most cited paper, independent of the subject, but restricted to those who are fellows of a learned society:
http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/learned_society_fellows_table.html
So he might be in the top 100 high profile scientists that also do climate science.
For the 2-3% figure, google showed this:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf
Which is probably better than the one that I was aware of, which was Doran and Zimmerman:
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
KR says:
July 25, 2012 at 12:13 pm
Air quality regulations (such as the 1970′s Clean Air act and similar legislation) will have an effect, particularly if China starts doing something about their aerosols…
China will do whatever its pols decide is in China’s best long-term interest, and they have already decided that *increasing* the number of their coal-fired plants is in China’s best long-term interest.
Wombat says:
July 25, 2012 at 8:58 pm
Sceptics make up about 2 or 3 % of climate scientists. Let’s not exaggerate the opinion of one in one group by not reporting on the learned opinion of 100 in the other group.
Aside from the arithmatic error, I hope you’re not basing your statement on that thoroughly-debunked “97% of climate scientists” meme.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/what-else-did-the-97-of-scientists-say/
KR says:
July 25, 2012 at 7:51 pm
Thanks, KR. I don’t assume anything about aerosols, except that as the IPCC says, our level of scientific understanding (LOSU) of them is “Low”. Since “Low” is the lowest of the LOSU ratings given by the IPCC, that ain’t saying much …
Indeed, for the larger “indirect” aerosol effect, the IPCC says the 95% confidence interval, at 1.5 W/m2, is nearly as large as the claimed CO2 forcing … so if that’s what you are putting your faith in, the barely-understood indirect aerosol effect … well, good luck.
w.
KR says:
July 25, 2012 at 12:13 pm
Absolutely not. The effects from Pinatubo were much, much smaller than predicted. See my analyses here on WUWT, here and here. You’ve been scammed, my friend, by people claiming that Pinatubo was _just_ like they predicted, when it wasn’t. See also the post “Volcanic Disruptions“. Among other things, after El Chichon, which was a huge eruption, temperatures increased … go figure.
So no, KR, the PlayStation™ climate models didn’t get the volcanoes right in the slightest.
w.
Willis Eschenbach:‘ the IPCC says the 95% confidence interval, at 1.5 W/m2, is nearly as large as the claimed CO2 forcing’
I don’t know if you realise it but the imaginary energy in the models [2009 Energy Budget:;333 W/m^2 ‘back radiation’ – 238.5 W/m^2 DOWN IR at TOA = 94.5 W.m^2] is 60 times the 1.6 W/m^2 presently-claimed aerosol cooling supposed exactly to offset CO2-AGW! To make the rest disappear involves doubled real low level cloud optical depth [see G L Stephens article on page 5 here: http://www.gewex.org/images/feb2010.pdf ]
The aerosol optical physics in the models is wrong. NASA claims clouds with highest albedo are those with smallest droplets because of increased ‘surface reflection’: there is no such physics. In reality, high albedo is a large droplet effect as proved by thunderclouds etc.
The real net AIE is the opposite sign, However, this is forbidden knowledge because it competes with Hansenkoism.
It undermines the degree of certainty we can have in modelers who considered such a plateau unlikely. Who considered, BEFORE the fact, such noise to be less significant. It increases the likelihood that there’s something not yet understood that’s offsetting the supposed tight coupling of CO2 levels and the global temperature.
KR says:
“15 years of raw data is just not sufficient to establish a linear trend in the presence of noise and variation.”
===========================
The linear trend for 30 years is 1.3C per century (RSS), i.e., a non problem, and the last half of that indicates the warming rate has decreased. Is 30 years enough?
See the recent WUWT threads on those surveys, here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/about-that-overwhelming-98-number-of-scientists-consensus/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/what-else-did-the-97-of-scientists-say/